Posts For: January 19, 2014

The Obama administration and other opponents of the pending Senate bill that would tighten sanctions on Iran in the event the current nuclear negotiations fail, claim it would blow up the diplomatic process. This makes no sense because the Iranians are the principal beneficiaries of the talks and have far more to lose than the West if the talks collapse because they would then lose the chance to get all the sanctions lifted. But the administration and its defenders also claim the bill is unnecessary since the current sanctions are still working (despite being weakened during the interim accord) and can easily be strengthened in the event that Washington concedes that the process has failed at the expiration of the six-month period for negotiations, which begins today.

But the problem with that argument, as the New York Times reported on Friday, is that Iran is open for international business now. While there have been signs indicating that Iran’s economy is already recovering from the impact of sanctions, the interim accord has led to a parade of European businessmen trooping to Tehran to lay the groundwork for what they see as the impending collapse of the restrictions on transactions with the Islamist regime. Indeed, according to the Times one of the busiest people in the Iranian capital is Hossein Sheikholeslami, the former terrorist (he was one of the “students” responsible for holding American diplomats hostage in 1979) assigned to fielding offers from nations including Germany, Italy, and Finland which, despite their nominal allegiance to the U.S.-led sanctions coalition, are champing at the bit to get their bids in now for contracts to do business in Iran.

Seen in that light, we won’t have to wait until July to know whether the latest P5+1 with Iran talks will succeed. If the sanctions are coming apart at the seams today, then the interim accord has already failed.

The Obama administration and other opponents of the pending Senate bill that would tighten sanctions on Iran in the event the current nuclear negotiations fail, claim it would blow up the diplomatic process. This makes no sense because the Iranians are the principal beneficiaries of the talks and have far more to lose than the West if the talks collapse because they would then lose the chance to get all the sanctions lifted. But the administration and its defenders also claim the bill is unnecessary since the current sanctions are still working (despite being weakened during the interim accord) and can easily be strengthened in the event that Washington concedes that the process has failed at the expiration of the six-month period for negotiations, which begins today.

But the problem with that argument, as the New York Times reported on Friday, is that Iran is open for international business now. While there have been signs indicating that Iran’s economy is already recovering from the impact of sanctions, the interim accord has led to a parade of European businessmen trooping to Tehran to lay the groundwork for what they see as the impending collapse of the restrictions on transactions with the Islamist regime. Indeed, according to the Times one of the busiest people in the Iranian capital is Hossein Sheikholeslami, the former terrorist (he was one of the “students” responsible for holding American diplomats hostage in 1979) assigned to fielding offers from nations including Germany, Italy, and Finland which, despite their nominal allegiance to the U.S.-led sanctions coalition, are champing at the bit to get their bids in now for contracts to do business in Iran.

Seen in that light, we won’t have to wait until July to know whether the latest P5+1 with Iran talks will succeed. If the sanctions are coming apart at the seams today, then the interim accord has already failed.

As critics of the interim accord signed in Geneva in November said at the time, the decision by the Obama administration to begin the process of loosening sanctions just at the moment when they appeared most effective in their goal of forcing Iran to end its nuclear program was nothing short of a fatal mistake. Though the president has mocked the idea that the new sanctions being considered by the Senate would strengthen his hand in the talks, his decision to grant the Iranians significant relief from the earlier sanctions has already begun the process by which the entire edifice of economic restrictions is virtually in shambles.

As the Times story illustrates, the actions of European nations that were unenthusiastic about sanctions from the start (which could also be said of the Obama administration since it opposed the current tough sanctions when Congress debated their adoption) are allowing the Iranians to claim that the sanctions regime is tottering. This will strengthen Tehran’s hand in negotiations since it may reasonably conclude the U.S. can’t count on international support for renewed sanctions if, as is more than likely, the Iranians refuse to dismantle or even substantially degrade their nuclear program in the coming talks.

Nor is the interest in resuming business with the Islamist tyrants confined to a few outliers or even only Europeans:

In the first two weeks of the year, Iran welcomed more delegations from Europe than in all of 2013.

“The Europeans are waiting in line to come here,” said Mr. Sheikholeslami, the international affairs adviser to the head of Iran’s Parliament, Ali Larijani, who has been receiving many of the high-profile visitors. “They are coming to seek benefits and to get ahead of their international rivals.”

Italy’s foreign minister, Emma Bonino, has been here, as has a former British foreign minister, Jack Straw, in his capacity as the head of the Iran-Britain Friendship Committee.

The prime ministers of Italy and Poland have also scheduled visits. Trade delegations from Ireland, Italy and France are expected in coming weeks.

American companies have shown some interest, of course. In September the head of President Hassan Rouhani’s office, the former director of the Iranian Chamber of Commerce, Mohammad Nahavandian, held a closed-door meeting with leading chief executives in New York. In March, an Iranian investment company is organizing a $15,000-a-ticket seminar in New York on business opportunities in Iran.

President Obama and others who claim more sanctions can only mean war say the only path to peace runs through the diplomatic process and that it must be given more time to succeed. But the boomtown atmosphere in Tehran that has kept Sheikholeslami hopping is proof that the real choice is not between more sanctions and diplomacy. Without a law on the books that will mandate a complete economic embargo of Iran if the diplomats fail to produce a deal that ends the Iranian nuclear threat, Tehran can confidently assume it has nothing to lose from more delaying tactics and a refusal to give up its nuclear dreams.

The administration has also further undermined its own leverage with Iran by demonstrating its eagerness to cooperate with Tehran on the conflicts in Syria and Iraq. That rightly scares American allies in the region and gives the impression that President Obama is more interested in fostering détente with Iran than in making good on his campaign promises to force it to give up its nuclear program. With “open for business” signs going up in Tehran as European delegations arrive to renew ties, rather than denouncing the sanctions bill, the administration should be embracing it as its last best hope to convince the Iranians that they have no other option but to negotiate the surrender of their nuclear project.

There’s no sign that Hillary Clinton will forgo a run for a Democratic presidential nomination in 2016 that appears to be hers for the asking. But should she pass, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo will likely be one of the main contenders. As such, he has spent the last year shoring up his left flank by departing from the moderate policies that he ran on in 2010 and that characterized his first two years in office. But Cuomo’s pivot left has now escalated to the point where he not only wishes to impose liberal ideas on a blue state apparently all too eager to accept such dictates but to make it clear that those who oppose him are no longer welcome to stay.

You’re seeing that play out in New York. … The Republican Party candidates are running against the SAFE Act — it was voted for by moderate Republicans who run the Senate! Their problem is not me and the Democrats; their problem is themselves. Who are they? Are they these extreme conservatives who are right-to-life, pro-assault-weapon, anti-gay? Is that who they are? Because if that’s who they are and they’re the extreme conservatives, they have no place in the state of New York, because that’s not who New Yorkers are.

Cuomo’s astonishing statement may please a suddenly ascendant left wing of the Democratic Party that is now feeling its strength after the election of Bill de Blasio as mayor of New York City and thinking about how it could influence the 2016 Democratic race. But it also demonstrates a disturbing degree of intolerance that illustrates the general rule of thumb, that conservatives believe liberals to be wrong and liberals think conservatives are evil. While this will endear Cuomo with his party’s base, it may come back to haunt him if he ever gets the chance to campaign on the national stage.

There’s no sign that Hillary Clinton will forgo a run for a Democratic presidential nomination in 2016 that appears to be hers for the asking. But should she pass, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo will likely be one of the main contenders. As such, he has spent the last year shoring up his left flank by departing from the moderate policies that he ran on in 2010 and that characterized his first two years in office. But Cuomo’s pivot left has now escalated to the point where he not only wishes to impose liberal ideas on a blue state apparently all too eager to accept such dictates but to make it clear that those who oppose him are no longer welcome to stay.

You’re seeing that play out in New York. … The Republican Party candidates are running against the SAFE Act — it was voted for by moderate Republicans who run the Senate! Their problem is not me and the Democrats; their problem is themselves. Who are they? Are they these extreme conservatives who are right-to-life, pro-assault-weapon, anti-gay? Is that who they are? Because if that’s who they are and they’re the extreme conservatives, they have no place in the state of New York, because that’s not who New Yorkers are.

Cuomo’s astonishing statement may please a suddenly ascendant left wing of the Democratic Party that is now feeling its strength after the election of Bill de Blasio as mayor of New York City and thinking about how it could influence the 2016 Democratic race. But it also demonstrates a disturbing degree of intolerance that illustrates the general rule of thumb, that conservatives believe liberals to be wrong and liberals think conservatives are evil. While this will endear Cuomo with his party’s base, it may come back to haunt him if he ever gets the chance to campaign on the national stage.

Cuomo’s reference to abortion opponents is especially interesting in the way it seeks to declare them not only out of the political mainstream in New York (which is undoubtedly true) but also worthy of being driven out of the Empire State. As Kathryn Jean Lopez noted in National Review on Friday, the governor’s rant demonstrates the distance both the Democratic Party and the Cuomo family have traveled in the last 30 years. As Lopez writes, in 1984, one of Cuomo’s predecessors as governor of New York—his father Mario—famously articulated a nuanced position in which he restated his personal opposition to abortion while defending its legality and public funding.

This same intolerance is made manifest in the federal ObamaCare mandate that seeks to force Catholic charity groups like the Little Sisters of the Poor pay for abortion drugs and contraception for its employees. That is a far cry from Mario Cuomo’s attempt to build a wall between private opposition to abortion and a public right to it. The Democrats of Barack Obama and Andrew Cuomo will now brook no opposition to their dictates or, in Cuomo’s case, even allow opponents to reside in “his” state.

However, the spark for Cuomo’s anger—opposition to the gun bill he promulgated in his State of the State last year and then rammed through the legislature inside of a day as a sop to public anguish about Newtown—also demonstrates the incoherence of this new extreme liberalism. The SAFE act imposed new bans on assault weapons, gun magazines, and imposed even broader rules for background checks for legal gun purchases. But in the year since it was passed, it has gone largely unenforced since it has sown almost universal confusion among law-enforcement personnel and gun venders and owners who are unsure what is and what is not rendered illegal by the vague language in the sloppily-drafted legislation Cuomo championed.

One needn’t be an opponent of legalized abortion or a member of the National Rifle Association to understand the dangers of this sort of rhetoric and a legislative agenda driven by such sentiments. Liberals have spent the past few years posing as the champions of tolerance while denouncing the Tea Party and conservative Republicans as extremists. But now that the left wing of the Democratic Party has taken back the reins of the party from more centrist forces—or in Cuomo’s case, a former moderate has put his finger in the wind and changed his direction accordingly—the same dynamic could undermine their attempts to win national elections. Just as the GOP must worry about letting its most extreme elements dictate policy and candidates, Democrats should think twice about the spectacle of one of their leading lights going so far as to tell opponents of abortion and gun control to leave New York. If Clinton passes on the presidency and Cuomo makes a run for the White House, that intolerant line won’t be forgotten.

Gary Sick, a Carter administration National Security Council aide, took to the pages of USA Today this past week to argue that the congressional bill to increase sanctions should Iran not negotiate in good faith or reach a deal is counterproductive. Sick wrote:

This misguided bill threatens to derail the negotiations and sabotage progress. Our negotiators do not want or need this extra sanctions threat. They already have a strong hand, and new sanctions will almost certainly be seen by Iran as evidence of bad faith.

Sick is wrong. Leverage matters. It always has. And no one should know that more than one Gary Sick. Sick bases his authority on his service during the Iran hostage crisis. Indeed, he begins his essay, “Thirty-five years ago, when the Iranian revolution overthrew the shah and our diplomats were taken hostage, I was in the White House. Many of those taken prisoner remain personal friends of mine.”

Gary Sick, a Carter administration National Security Council aide, took to the pages of USA Today this past week to argue that the congressional bill to increase sanctions should Iran not negotiate in good faith or reach a deal is counterproductive. Sick wrote:

This misguided bill threatens to derail the negotiations and sabotage progress. Our negotiators do not want or need this extra sanctions threat. They already have a strong hand, and new sanctions will almost certainly be seen by Iran as evidence of bad faith.

Sick is wrong. Leverage matters. It always has. And no one should know that more than one Gary Sick. Sick bases his authority on his service during the Iran hostage crisis. Indeed, he begins his essay, “Thirty-five years ago, when the Iranian revolution overthrew the shah and our diplomats were taken hostage, I was in the White House. Many of those taken prisoner remain personal friends of mine.”

The hostage crisis, of course, figures heavily in my new book, Dancing with the Devil, a history of U.S. diplomacy with rogue regimes. The hostages were seized on November 4, 1979, after Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter’s national security advisor, publicly shook hands with Iranian Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan, enraging Iranian hardliners surrounding revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. I detail the episode here.

What is less known but has become apparent based on the Persian (Farsi)-language writings of the hostage takers is that the Iranian students who took the embassy did not initially plan to stage more than a symbolic sit-in lasting perhaps 48 hours. But, on November 6, 1979, a press report appeared citing an anonymous official who leaked word from the emergency meeting that occurred at the White House that there would be “no change in the status quo—no military alert, no movement of forces, no resort to military contingency plans.” The leaker, according to other members of Carter’s Iran team, was likely Gary Sick, who often talked to the press. Perhaps Sick, or the White House if the leak was authorized, believed that taking the threat of something worse to come off the table would enable diplomacy. But by removing the threat of force, it forfeited its leverage. The hostage takers learned that they had nothing to fear, and so a short hiccup transformed into a 444-day crisis that defined the Carter presidency. In effect, Sick counsels Obama and the Congress to make the same mistake twice.

The State Department seldom conducts lessons-learned exercises, but if it did, it would find that leverage always matters. Reducing leverage does not win agreements; it hampers them. While Sick reads good faith into Iranian actions, past and present, Rouhani’s ownwordsbelie that notion. Diplomacy should be a strategy of first resort, but diplomacy involves more than talking: it is the culmination of an elaborate game of three-dimensional chess as both sides maneuver for position and build up the leverage to achieve the best results for their country. Alas, that seems to be a notion Iranian leaders understand well, but it represents a blind spot for Sick and his fellow travelers, one that has cost the United States dearly over the years.

Dennis Rodman checked into an alcohol rehab center this past week, a source close to the former National Basketball Association star told CNN. The move caps off another bizarre North Korea trip in which Rodman played basketball for North Korea’s murderous ruler, Kim Jong-un, questioned whether imprisoned American pastor Kenneth Bae deserved his 15-year sentence in North Korea and, after apologizing for those remarks, headed off to go skiing in a North Korean resort.

Just about every commentator condemned Rodman’s North Korea spectacle, although Rodman himself and some of the former NBA stars who he brought to Pyongyang defended his “sporting diplomacy.” His agent Darren Prince defended the trip. “People forget Dennis is just an entertainer and retired NBA star… The fact remains that a basketball game was played in North Korea live in front of 14,000 people and hundreds of millions around the world viewed clips of the game.”

Dennis Rodman checked into an alcohol rehab center this past week, a source close to the former National Basketball Association star told CNN. The move caps off another bizarre North Korea trip in which Rodman played basketball for North Korea’s murderous ruler, Kim Jong-un, questioned whether imprisoned American pastor Kenneth Bae deserved his 15-year sentence in North Korea and, after apologizing for those remarks, headed off to go skiing in a North Korean resort.

Just about every commentator condemned Rodman’s North Korea spectacle, although Rodman himself and some of the former NBA stars who he brought to Pyongyang defended his “sporting diplomacy.” His agent Darren Prince defended the trip. “People forget Dennis is just an entertainer and retired NBA star… The fact remains that a basketball game was played in North Korea live in front of 14,000 people and hundreds of millions around the world viewed clips of the game.”

Make no mistake: Rodman’s North Korea forays do not advance diplomacy; they retard it. They legitimize a barbaric regime, give it free press and propaganda points, and do nothing to break down barriers or create understandings. But, while many commentators are quick to condemn Rodman, they never question why Rodman is wrong but they assume so many other episodes of sporting diplomacy to be right. The State Department celebrates, for example, football friendlies and wrestling exhibitions with Iran and Cuba, but never explains why those events are any different than what Rodman does in Pyongyang.

Many diplomats point to the famous Ping-Pong exhibition with China to justify almost all sporting diplomacy, but there was context to that episode, and it was carefully choreographed by both sides against the backdrop of simultaneous initiatives. As Kissinger notes in his 1979 book White House Years, that iconic moment did not initiate relations but followed months of secret diplomacy. To credit “ping pong diplomacy” with the China breakthrough puts the cart before the horse.

Rodman was wrong. His antics in North Korea were clownish and an embarrassment to the United States. How sad it is, then, that they are not too different in result from much of the other sporting diplomacy which the State Department actually encourages. There is a time and a place for athletic exchanges, but seldom do they accomplish what American diplomats claim. Attending a soccer match might be fun, but it does not resolve the threat posed by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs, any more than Rodman reduces the menace posed by the dear leader.

Toward the top of his piece on the debate about Israel at this year’s Modern Language Association conference, Joel Griffith posts a picture he took of the Delegate Assembly meeting, just before a resolution urging the State Department to contest Israel’s visa policy was to be debated. Though the room was not full, Griffith reports that there were 250 in attendance to discuss the Modern Language Association’s Middle East policy. Griffith tells me that the picture was taken at about 3:15 p.m.

Two minutes before, Lee Skallerup, professor and author of the blog College Ready Writing, had tweeted this picture from a panel on the plight of adjunct instructors, what she called, with some justification, “the biggest issue facing” the language and literature teaching biz. Such low-paid instructors, who typically do not receive benefits, make up an ever increasing percentage of teaching faculty not only in language and literature but in higher education altogether. While 250 people considered the plight of a handful of U.S. academics denied entry to the West Bank, five scholars were in attendance to discuss a problem the MLA might do something about.

Toward the top of his piece on the debate about Israel at this year’s Modern Language Association conference, Joel Griffith posts a picture he took of the Delegate Assembly meeting, just before a resolution urging the State Department to contest Israel’s visa policy was to be debated. Though the room was not full, Griffith reports that there were 250 in attendance to discuss the Modern Language Association’s Middle East policy. Griffith tells me that the picture was taken at about 3:15 p.m.

Two minutes before, Lee Skallerup, professor and author of the blog College Ready Writing, had tweeted this picture from a panel on the plight of adjunct instructors, what she called, with some justification, “the biggest issue facing” the language and literature teaching biz. Such low-paid instructors, who typically do not receive benefits, make up an ever increasing percentage of teaching faculty not only in language and literature but in higher education altogether. While 250 people considered the plight of a handful of U.S. academics denied entry to the West Bank, five scholars were in attendance to discuss a problem the MLA might do something about.

Doing something about the academic job market may require, as Walter Russell Mead observes, producing fewer Ph.D.’s. But at a well-attended panel on “Competing Agendas and Ethics in Graduate Education,” speakers called for business as usual. As Scott Jaschik of Inside Higher Edreports, while “many of those urging talk about the issue want to see programs shrink, the speakers here rejected that approach, with one even calling for programs to expand.” Onward.

It is unambiguously the job of a professional association like the MLA to be concerned about language and literature teaching and with what effect, if any, dependence on a contingent, economically insecure teaching corps might have on the quality of language and literature education. There is no question that officers and members of the MLA have expressed concern about these matters, but as the two pictures suggest, cost-free political posturing is more popular than facing the hard questions the MLA is actually charged with facing.

In the Times of Israel on Thursday, Sharon Musher writes movingly about a related matter, the American Studies Association’s recent vote to boycott Israel. That vote has bought the ASA wide condemnation, from over two hundred college and university leaders, several academic associations, the editorial boards of the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, and more than 100 members of Congress. Among many of Musher’s many excellent arguments—and I urge everyone to read the whole thing—is this one: the ASA leadership, in pushing the resolution, proceeded with complete disregard for the good of American Studies undergraduate and graduate students. Here is Musher, addressing the outgoing and incoming presidents of the ASA:

“I fear for my students’ future, the outlook for Stockton’s American Studies program, and the prospects for the field in the aftermath of the dangerous institutional decision you have made. As if the humanities were not in sufficiently dire straits, as if our graduates did not already need to struggle to manage their debt and find jobs in a bleak economy, as if public institutions of higher learning had not already seen their budgets slashed over the past few years, you have added fuel to the flames by turning the world’s attention to the ASA’s proclivity to political activism over scholarship and the intellectual exchange of ideas.”

Musher is leaving the ASA, and while other boycott opponents have chosen to stick around try to reform the organization from within, I think her decision makes sense. The recent history of the organization, going back more than a decade, offers very little hope of a near-term change.

No doubt supporters of the ASA boycott or the MLA anti-Israel resolution will argue that academics must be willing to sacrifice their interests in order to stand with oppressed Palestinians (as if impotent MLA or ASA statements are the sole or most effective way to take such a stand). Setting aside the debate over the substance of the ASA and MLA statements, which has been discussed more than once in these pages, it is striking that the only interests these particular academics are sacrificing are, as Musher emphasizes, those of their students. How noble.

Diplomacy often obstructs moral clarity. After the Clinton administration launched its high-profile engagement with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), for example, State Department officials bent over backwards to ignore the complacency of PLO leaders in financing and ordering acts of terror. As I document in my new book, a comparison of intelligence available to the State Department and the concurrent testimony of senior State Department officials to Congress shows that the diplomats simply lied about the character of their partners in order to avoid U.S. law that would mandate a cessation of aid should the PLO be involved in terror.

For the past five years, both senior military officials (up to and including Gen. David Petraeus) and senior diplomats (up to and including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton) have advocated for talks with the Taliban. At no time did policymakers consider the Bill Clinton administration’s sorry, five-year experience talking to the Taliban, an episode that caused diplomats to become distracted from the Taliban’s true aims and goals in the years leading up to the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks.

Diplomacy often obstructs moral clarity. After the Clinton administration launched its high-profile engagement with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), for example, State Department officials bent over backwards to ignore the complacency of PLO leaders in financing and ordering acts of terror. As I document in my new book, a comparison of intelligence available to the State Department and the concurrent testimony of senior State Department officials to Congress shows that the diplomats simply lied about the character of their partners in order to avoid U.S. law that would mandate a cessation of aid should the PLO be involved in terror.

For the past five years, both senior military officials (up to and including Gen. David Petraeus) and senior diplomats (up to and including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton) have advocated for talks with the Taliban. At no time did policymakers consider the Bill Clinton administration’s sorry, five-year experience talking to the Taliban, an episode that caused diplomats to become distracted from the Taliban’s true aims and goals in the years leading up to the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks.

Time launders terrorists, after all. While the press and many policymakers once mocked Secretary of State Colin Powell for wanting to work with “moderate Taliban,” by the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, that had effectively become the policy of the White House.

The Taliban’s attack on a Kabul restaurant frequented by foreigners is tragic, but should be a reminder of just who the Taliban are and what they represent. To call them an insurgent force is inaccurate: insurgents battle armies; they do not bomb restaurants and then shoot unarmed civilians. The Taliban are terrorists, plain and simple, and America’s premature withdrawal will empower them. The Taliban are not simply a Pashtun movement, as the late Richard Holbrooke once implied. True, many Taliban might be Pashtun, but not all Pashtun are Taliban and, indeed, many Pashtun have spent decades resisting the ignorant thugs who flocked to the Taliban.

It is time to put objective fact above diplomatic wishful thinking. The Taliban are terrorists, and seeking to include them in any post-withdrawal order is akin to negotiating with terrorists. Negotiating with the Taliban has not worked in the past, and there is no reason to believe any compromise will be possible in the future. Not talking to the Taliban, but allowing them to fill the vacuum created by America’s withdrawal is just as bad. Sometimes, adversaries simply need to be defeated, an accomplishment not possible when the White House constrains the military.

If the Taliban responsible for the restaurant attack had direct links to Pakistan—and they likely did—then it is time to designate Pakistan as a state sponsor of terrorism, no ifs, ands, or buts: diplomatic nicety does not benefit the United States; it makes them think America is weak and risible. Perhaps American diplomats and former senators find such talks sophisticated. Regardless, beyond the Pakistani Taliban and the Haqqani Network which are already designated, it is long past time to designate every other Taliban group which conducts attacks on civilians to be terrorists, and their foreign government sponsors to be state sponsors. While the Taliban has said that the attack on the Kabul restaurant was retaliation–a claim picked up and amplified by the New York Times–my colleague Ahmad Majidyar pointed out that the Taliban makes such excuses for external consumption only. What the Taliban did not mention was that it also killed three young civilians in a rocket attack in Kandahar, an attack that had everything to do with the character of the movement and nothing to do with feigned grievance.

Perhaps it will remain the policy of President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry to compromise with and perhaps even empower terrorists through the policies they advocate. But if so, they should acknowledge it openly and be accountable for the strategic and moral vacuity of their position.